Self-Inflicted Stupidity – Scott Pelley

CBS News anchor Scott Pelley â€” make that former CBS News anchor Scott Pelley â€” is the face of sanctimonious liberalism. The attempted assassination of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and his GOP colleagues on the baseball field in Alexandria last week somehow prompted Pelleyâ€™s comment on the day after: â€œItâ€™s time to ask whether the attack on the United States Congress, yesterday, was foreseeable, predictable and, to some degree, self-inflictedâ€� (video below). Pelley of course answered the question that approximately no one was asking in the affirmative.

You have to love that â€œto some degree.â€� Pelley didnâ€™t say that Scalise and his colleagues were entirely responsible for the mania of the leftist wack job who shot them. This is a fine tuned assessment.

Scalise lies in a hospital bed unable to defend himself from disparagement by the likes of Pelley. What might Scalise or any of his House colleagues have said to justify the imputation of responsibility for their own shooting to them? From the wide world of Republican politics, Pelley cites Presidentâ€™s Trump February tweet that the news media are the â€œenemy of the American people.â€�

Now if we were deliberating over whether Trump were responsible for an irate viewer punching Pelley in his smarmy face, Pelley might have a point. Perhaps then Pelley â€œto some degreeâ€� might share responsibility with Trump. But thatâ€™s not what weâ€™re talking about (donâ€™t say â€œunfortunatelyâ€�).

Pelley combines mind-numbing stupidity with Olympian condescension. His disdain for the likes of us is patent. The case for his contribution to the climate of opinion in which the maniacal leftist assailant James Hodgkinson stewed would have more to it than his case against Trump or Republican congressmen.